The victory of Donald Trump in this month’s US presidential election sparked a debate about the impact of the online sharing of fake and misleading news on the final vote.
We’ve put together some of the false election stories that were widely shared by search engines or on social media - alongside some events that did actually happen. Can you distinguish fact from fiction?
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Donald Trump won the popular vote in the US election by 700,000 votes
True
False
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An FBI agent suspected in Clinton's email leaks found dead in an apparent murder-suicide
True
False
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Donald Trump once claimed climate change was a hoax created by China
True
False
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Brietbart News chairman Stephen K. Bannon appointed chief White House strategist for President-elect Donald Trump
True
False
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Clinton stumbled while leaving 9/11 memorial event early, raising concerns about her health
True
False
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Pope Francis backed Trump for the White House
True
False
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In 2013, Clinton told Goldman Sachs bigwigs: "I would like to see people like Donald Trump run for office. They're honest, and can't be bought'
True
False
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Donald Trump was born in Pakistan
True
False
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Denzel Washington backed President-elect Trump, saying: "he has hired more employees, more people, than anyone I know in the world."
True
False
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In a 1998 People interview, Donald Trump said: "if I were to run, I'd run as a Republican. They're the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they'd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific."
True
False
Solutions
1:B - Trump won the election, but he is trailing in the popular vote. But on 14 November, the first entry in Google’s news category was a post from a site called 70news. Its headline? 'Final election 2016 numbers: Trump won both popular (62.9M-62.2M) and Electoral College Votes (306-232)', 2:B - This story was circulated widely on Facebook on November 5th. The only problem? The Denver Guardian doesn't exist as a newspaper. The domain denverguardian.com was first registered in July 2016, as journalists at the Denver Post are keen to point out, 3:A - Trump has since denied he said this, though his Twitter account tells a different story. Trump has also attempted to roll back on his climate change comments by saying they were a joke, but he campaigned for the White House on a platform of climate change scepticism, 4:A - I'm afraid so., 5:A - The incident, caught on video, fanned the flames various conspiracy theories about Clinton's health. The Democratic presidential candidate's doctor later released a statement revealing Clinton had been diagnosed with pneumonia, 6:B - Pope Francis did not back Donald Trump for the White House. But at the time of writing, 'fantasy news sites' such as WTOE 5 News are still preaching this line with decent Google exposure. According to similar fantasy stories, the pope previously backed... Hillary Clinton, 7:B - A website called ConservativeState was one of several to repeat this claim, which picked up hundreds of thousands of Facebook shares. The source, supposedly, was the wikileaks release of Clinton's paid speeches. The quote was entirely fabricated, 8:B - Clearly a riff on Trump's support for the birther movement, the false story that Trump was in fact born "Dawood Ibrahim Khan" made its way - albeit with a pinch of salt - to one Pakistani television network, 9:B - Facebook page 'American News' has racked up almost 5 1/2 million likes. This story, shared by tens of thousands, was entirely fabricated. Other recent American News stories include the suppositions that Obama has declared martial law and Kanye West is leaving the country because of Trump's election, 10:B - This meme has been drifting across the internet since Trump's campaign to become Republican Presidential nominee gained traction in 2015, but despite thousands of retweets, the interview - and resulting quote - never happened.
